Friday, January 10, 2014

Steve, About that Economic Action Plan

The job market - at least the one for Canadian workers in Canadian jobs - took a hit in the run-up to Christmas, dropping just shy of 46,000 jobs. Of course now that we import 'guest workers' to toil at everything from mining to burger flipping, the big picture may be even worse.

...the Canadian reading is all the more troubling because the job losses were driven by an erosion of full-time work.That brought growth in the labour market over the course of 2013 to 102,000, Statistics Canada said, or 0.6 per cent. The monthly average was 8,500 jobs, well down from 2012’s average of almost 26,000.

“December’s labour force survey was awful across the board with an ugly headline number and even worse details,” said senior economist Krishen Rangasamy of National Bank Financial, noting that the overall showing for last year was the “worst net jobs tally” since 2009.

The Harper government remains a one-trick pony, obsessed with pipelines at the expense of workers. Meanwhile, British Columbia's rightwing leader, Chesty Clark, has been even less effective at job creation than Harper. Her B.C. Jobs Plan has failed miserably to deliver results. Oh, don't worry, we're flush with natural gas.

“The jobs recovery after the 2008-09 recession has been weak across Canada, but B.C.’s is even weaker, and the Jobs Plan hasn’t helped,” said economist and report author Iglika Ivanova. “In fact, we were third to last in terms of job creation in 2013, actually losing jobs while most other provinces saw job growth.”

Only 71 per cent of working-age British Columbians have jobs today, effectively unchanged since the start of the BC Jobs Plan and barely improved since the low point of the recession. •

B.C. needs 94,000 more jobs just to return to the province’s pre-recession employ­ment rate (the proportion of working age British Columbians who have jobs). That’s equivalent to the number of jobs created in 2010, 2011 and 2012 combined.

The Loonie, meanwhile, continues to drop against the U.S. greenback. After the better part of a decade milking the economy he inherited from Liberal predecessors, economist Harper and his garden gnome finance minister have hit "empty." Maybe that will be enough to see them off in 2015.

I wouldn't trust those American numbers too far. They're pretty stage managed these days; they release preliminary numbers based on various assumptions to much fanfare, then a couple months later they release the real, far less rosy numbers but by then it's old news and can be safely ignored.Our economy's doing crappy, but the US one is too.

I just learned from reading "Trapped in a Whirlpool" that jobs offering only 30 hours a week are now considered 'full-time' employment in those employment figures.

Stats are a tricky game since the numbers can be easily interpreted to fit one's agenda if nobody bothers with the fine print. Rarely on news reports do they announce that the majority of jobs created in the last few years have been part-time (less than 30 hours a week). Also, do new jobs in Canada stats distinguish jobs filled by temporary foreign workers from other workers?

Beijing York....Also, do new jobs in Canada stats distinguish jobs filled by temporary feign workers from other workers? It is the same thing with Health Care. The government does not ever mention the 1000's of Canadians who travel to Thailand, Mexico and other countries to receive health care and dental care. Anyong